


Tick, Tock

by Enigel



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Gen, Inspired by Art
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-23
Updated: 2011-08-23
Packaged: 2017-10-24 02:25:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/257867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enigel/pseuds/Enigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steampunk-ish AU, inspired by <a href="http://cabinpres-fic.livejournal.com/1249.html?thread=1653729#t1653729">Strangechild's gorgeous art</a>, all in the context of <a href="http://cabinpres-fic.livejournal.com/1249.html?thread=1640673#t1640673">this epic prompt</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	Tick, Tock

"What are we doing here, George? George, this can't be a proper doctor's office! There are... machine parts everywhere, and it smells of dynamo oil!" She covered her mouth with her hand. "Oh no, George, no."

"Shut up, Elsa," her husband growled, not taking his eyes off the unmoving shape in his arms. "The 'proper doctors' would just let Marty die. I don't need no 'proper doctors'."

"We could try that doctor in Bristol, he's said to be good in incurable affections of the cord! Anything, but not- not this!"

"Marty doesn't have time for Bristol. Marty doesn't need another ponce to tell us how bloody sorry he is. Marty needs a heart, and this chap can give him one. And he's here already," George added in a whisper, "so behave yourselves."

"That's him?" Elsa hissed. "Is that a how a doctor should look? Look at him, not a proper doctor, not a proper engineer..."

"Elsa! Marty's life is going to be in his hands!" George whispered urgently.

"It's quite all right, Mr Crieff, I'm very good at ignoring unfavourable opinions about my person, and I certainly won't hold them against my patient."

George deposed Marty on the operating table, and the doctor and he unwrapped Marty from his blanket.

"Oh. You said Marty was six. He looks about four," the doctor said, a faint nuance of reproach colouring his otherwise jaded voice.

Elsa took a step forward. "We took care of him the best we could! His heart's always been feeble, and it has slowed his-"

"He's short and skinny 'cause we're poor and he's weak," Simon said, in a bitter, vengeful tone.

"Simon!" Elsa and George gasped simultaneously.

That's when a pained whimper from Marty - the first noise he'd made since they started - drew them all around the table.

Marty twitched once, and then stopped moving. His laboured breaths ceased too. A horrible silence descended.

The doctor looked supremely unaffected. "We need to hurry. His heart has stopped."

"Marty!" Elsa shrieked, throwing herself over Marty's body. "My baby! My baby-boy! No!" She was sobbing.

"I said his heart stopped," the doctor replied calmly, "not that he died. He will, however, if you don't let me do my work."

"When your heart stops, you die," Simon muttered. "Everyone knows."

"Oh, Marty, his heart, his poor heart! You can't replace my baby's heart!"

"Ah, shared common knowledge, the refuge of the ignorance. Luckily for 'your baby', I draw my knowledge from a different repository." The doctor's hands were moving fast, almost inhumanly so, bringing scalpels, screwdrivers, cogs, wheels, and all sorts of other paraphernalia that Elsa didn't want to know the meaning of. "You can't replace a heart with another one, yes. But where biology fails, God - or at least the Germans - have gifted us with mechabiotics. One can - if one is extremely qualified, which to Marty's advantage I am - replace a heart with a machinery that will supply the same function, thus making Marty a happily living man."

"A man? He's going to be a mon-!" Elsa slapped her hand over her mouth.

"He's already a freak," Simon said from behind his mother.

"That's enough!" George boomed. "He's going to be your _son_ , Elsa, and your _brother_ , Simon, and I won't hear any more about it! Please, Doctor-"

"No names," the doctor cut him off abruptly. "And it's almost done."

"So quickly?"

"Yes. Odd, how heart surgery needs to be done quickly or not at all. Here's Marty, and here's the warranty certificate. Twenty-five years, although of course in reality the new heart might last him way beyond that."

"When your heart stops, you die," Simon repeated stubbornly, clinging to Elsa's dress.

* * *

"And that's the story of the day I died," Martin concluded, rubbing his chest in a gesture that had long since become an unconscious habit.

Douglas took a deep breath, trying to quell the rush of his own treacherous heart.

"The day you survived, surely?" he asked softly.

"Well. Opinions in my family never converged on that point," Martin said tartly. "They learned to agree to disagree: my mum tried to be nice to me, but I could see that her heart - hah! - wasn't in it, and my siblings didn't even try."

Douglas rubbed his own hand, where the artificial joints were cleverly concealed under the expensive French skin. It had been so long since he'd done that.

"What about your father?"

"He always hoped I'd follow in his footsteps, so he didn't leave me any money. Said the rusty old steam van and a whole garage's worth of parts were worth more than money. He'd always loved machines."

"He loved _you_ , Martin. He wanted you to live."

"Oh yes. A machine, fixing other machines. Hah. I wanted to fly one instead. Ever since I died when I was six, and my dad had me... repaired, flying was the only thing I still cared about."

"You do love flying," Douglas mused, trying to infuse an encouraging smile into his voice and not knowing if he succeeded. It wasn't accustomed to being used like this.

"I like flying, Douglas. One needs a heart to love," Martin said flatly.

Douglas felt very tired, and very sad.

"A heart is not a piece of flesh, Martin."

"Can we agree to disagree, Douglas?" Martin sounded as tired as Douglas felt. "Anyway, my point was... Apart from the van and the parts, dad also left me this. It's a warranty certificate, dated twenty-five years ago, and valid _for_ twenty-five years."

Douglas felt the blood rush from his face. His hands, his perfect mechanical hands, began shaking.

"As if I could find the hack who pieced me together, after all this time," Martin went on, apparently unaware of the First Officer's own inner and outer torment. "So, I- I come with an expiration date. Potential expiration date. Anyway. I- probably should've said it earlier, before... But I was afraid- She might not have hired me, and- I _had_ to be a pilot! It's the only thing I live for. If you call this life," he finished in a low whisper, which Douglas might have missed were it not for his enhanced eardrums - the best Austria had to offer.

"This _is_ a life, Martin, and don't you dare say otherwise," Douglas said, a little more harshly than he'd intended.

"Are you all right?" Martin gave him a curious glance. "You almost look like you care."

"Well, I'm not the literally heart-less one among us," Douglas replied by reflex, before he could catch up with himself.

Martin blanched. "Right. Fooled me again."

He stood up, his hand rubbing furiously at his chest.

"Martin! Wait! I didn't mean it like that! It's just- my friends and I used to joke like this all the time," he murmured to the empty room.

He regarded his hands again. The best hands money could buy, but the hospital didn't want a doctor who'd lost his real ones to alcohol. It had been a long, long time since he'd used them for medicine. Pilots also need steady hands, and if his were a bit overqualified, no one had complained about that. They were mechabiotics-friendly, at Air England, oh yes. Alas, that they didn't look so kindly on the unofficial borrowing and transport of parts, which had got Douglas kicked out faster than he could say 'tick-tock'.

Tick-tock, he thought. But that's how he'd found Martin, or Martin had found him.

He took the paper with the warranty date. It was yellowed and worn, but still so legible. It didn't shake in his hands. Whatever excess of emotion in a man unaccustomed to it he had been through, it had ceased now. Good. He might need his hands, very soon.

Tick-tock.


End file.
